We have just heard that Nintendo has today lost a major court case against the Divineo group in the main court of Paris. Nintendo originally took the group to court over DS flash carts, however the judge today has ruled against Nintendo and suggested that they are purposely locking out developers from their consoles and things should be more like Windows where ANYONE can develop any application if they wish to.

The ramifications of this are huge, as it indicates that flash carts are actually legal. Moroever, it could have bigger implications for developers and the like because Nintendo is deemed to be 'illegally' protecting their system by locking users out. Therefore, developers should not actually require separate development kits and should just be able to develop applications as they wish on retail versions of Nintendo's consoles.

And on a final note, this truly was a HUGE court case, up in the main court of Paris France and seems likely to be relevant to the whole of Europe.

Essentially, if people have to 'hack' the system and use Flash Carts to do develop, then it's all fine because Nintendo has left them with little other choice and the system should not be protected in such a restrictive way.

Nintendo makes a console, people use unofficial cartridges to pirate software on it, so Nintendo blocks out all cartridges not approved by them, then a judge tells Nintendo they are breaking the law? Society scares me more and more every day.

I can't wait to see what our pro-piracy community here has to say. Will it be the usual juvenile justifications such as "they have too much money anyways" or "their games aren't worth buying". Or hey, come on, somebody humor me with a "what about the FANTASTIC homebrew community!" argument.

Wow....I can't wait to see what our pro-piracy community here has to say. Will it be the usual juvenile justifications such as "they have too much money anyways" or "their games aren't worth buying". Or hey, come on, somebody humor me with a "what about the FANTASTIC homebrew community!" argument.

Nintendo makes a console, people use unofficial cartridges to pirate software on it, so Nintendo blocks out all cartridges not approved by them, then a judge tells Nintendo they are breaking the law? Society scares me more and more every day.

Well to be fair, this ruling doesn't make piracy legal, it's saying that (in their judicial opinion) Nintendo used illegal means to deter piracy. Kinda like how I can't just up and cover my front yard with landmines to deter thieves. Everyone's gotta obey the law. (Insert silly french laugh here)

I really have no personal opinion on this ruling. I think I need more info. I tried looking for another report on this ruling and have failed so far...

Is the judge trying to destroy the videogame industry? Clearly he does not remember what caused the videogame industry to crash in the early 80's. Anyone could develop what they wanted and the result was a shit-ton of crap-ware. Nintendo comes along with their NES and says "Only licensed developers can make games for our systems!" The industry SOARED like never before and hasn't had as much as a hiccup since. While I think that Nintendo's policies were way too strict back in the NES days (telling companies how many copies of a game they could make, that they couldn't port their games to other consoles, etc) they did have the right basic idea, one that has been employed by most console manufacturers ever since.

On the other hand, isn't the official name for the DS the "Developer's System"? What happened to that? When Nintendo was first pushing the DS a few years ago before release they wouldn't shut up about how easy it would be for anyone to develop for it.

I know people bash the quality of homebrew apps but in California there are actually college classes entirely dedicated to designing apps on the DS.

Nintendo makes a console, people use unofficial cartridges to pirate software on it, so Nintendo blocks out all cartridges not approved by them, then a judge tells Nintendo they are breaking the law? Society scares me more and more every day.

I can't wait to see what our pro-piracy community here has to say. Will it be the usual juvenile justifications such as "they have too much money anyways" or "their games aren't worth buying". Or hey, come on, somebody humor me with a "what about the FANTASTIC homebrew community!" argument.

Better than the high and mighty, high on your horse reaction.

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Paper exe - PS3 is a great console with many good games and good features.

Alucard - My only mistake was playing it on the PC.

Joe Redifer - I keep buying this shit because my IQ is in the single digits.

I think its more that the R4 should be allowed to stick around mainly for the people who develop games but dont sell them. I mean -every- system has a way to create games on it. But not every game gets to be sold. If I put my effort and managed to make a fun little platformer on the DS, I'd like to stuff it up ont he net for people to play with it. Like indie devs do on the PC. My platformer wouldnt be good enough to make money selling, but it would be interesting for people to try out and me get some feedback into how I can make it better.

Look at Valve. Half their development crew are ex indie devs who valve loved and hired. If the PC had been locked off these people would probably never had been working and some games we love today would not have been released, leading to a domino effect that would alter how certain other games evolved in the market. Nintendo will still make plenty of money from developers who sell games on their systems.